A tulip is the only flower we sell that keeps rearranging itself after you have finished arranging it.
Tulips are spring bulb flowers with a clean cup shape and almost no fuss to them. They are also alive in a way most cut flowers are not: a tulip keeps growing in the vase, leans toward the light, and will have moved by morning. Plan for that and they are a pleasure. Fight it and they will win.
What is a tulip?
Tulipa is a genus of bulb-forming perennials in the lily family. Despite everything the gift shops imply, it is not a Dutch flower. Tulips are native to Central Asia and were cultivated seriously in the Ottoman Empire long before they reached western Europe in the sixteenth century.
What happened next is the reason most people know the name. In the Dutch Republic of the 1630s, tulip bulbs became an object of speculation, with rare striped varieties changing hands for extraordinary sums before the market collapsed in 1637. It is routinely cited as the first speculative bubble. The stripes everyone was paying for, incidentally, were caused by a virus.
What does the tulip mean?
Tulips read as declared, uncomplicated love. Where the rose has been worn thin by obligation and the peony carries a whiff of the wedding industry, the tulip still manages to look like someone chose it.
That plainness is the appeal. It is a flower with no rhetoric in it.
Tulip colour meanings
- Red: a straightforward declaration of love. The closest thing to a rose without the baggage.
- Yellow: cheerfulness and warmth. Older sources read it as hopeless love, which nobody has meant for a century.
- White: apology, respect and a clean slate. A genuinely good apology flower.
- Purple: dignity and a little grandeur, from the Ottoman association with royalty.
- Pink: affection and care without the intensity of red.
When are tulips in season in Australia?
Tulips are a spring flower here, with the bulk of supply through September and October. It is the season the Southern Highlands and Canberra build festivals around, and the window is genuinely short.
Availability moves week to week with the grower. Our guide to flowers that bloom in spring in Australia covers what else lands at the same time.
A tulip will have moved by morning. Plan for it and they are a pleasure.
Why do tulips droop and bend?
Because they are still growing. A cut tulip can add several centimetres of stem in the vase, and it bends toward the nearest light source while it does. This is not the flower dying. It is the flower behaving normally, and it catches people out constantly.
How to care for cut tulips
- Use a tall, straight vase that supports the stems. A wide vessel guarantees a sprawl.
- Shallow, cool water. Tulips do not want depth, and cold water slows the growing down.
- Recut the stems and strip anything below the waterline.
- Turn the vase daily. If you leave it, every stem commits to the window.
- Keep them away from fruit and out of sun. Warmth opens them fast and finishes them faster.
- If they sprawl badly, wrap the bunch snugly in paper and stand it in deep water for an hour, then re-arrange.
The general principles are in our guide to keeping flowers alive longer.
Are tulips toxic to cats and dogs?
Yes, and the bulb is the dangerous part. The ASPCA lists Tulipa as toxic to cats, dogs and horses, with the highest concentration of the irritant compounds in the bulb rather than the flower.
For cut stems in a vase, the practical risk is lower but not nil. For potted tulips, keep the pot where an animal cannot dig. Call a vet if you suspect a bulb has been chewed. Our note on plants that are toxic to pets covers the rest of the spring bucket.
How to use tulips well
Tulips are best on their own or nearly so. Their shape is simple and their movement is the interest, and both get lost when they are packed into a mixed arrangement with layered flowers competing for attention.
A single-colour bunch in a straight vase, allowed to lean, is the honest use of this flower. In wedding flowers they read as fresh and unfussy rather than formal, which our Australian spring wedding flowers guide goes into.
The card, when the season is not co-operating.
Our tulip greeting card, $9.95, gold-foiled with your message printed inside. See the card →
